Gionee Elife S7: Slim Yet Very Powerful - Review

Gionee, the Chinese mobile phone manufacturer based in Shenzhen, is a company that doesn't make much noise. Its motto seems to be to get the product to do the talking. IANS got its hands on the handset maker's top device in India, the S7, which was launched at Rs.24,999. Here's our analysis:

• Design: The S7 is sleek and also has a classy feel to it which points to the emphasis Gionee lays on designing its products. The simple, glass-coated, metal-edged finish adds to the design aesthetics. Also, keeping in mind the slim design, it is worth noting that Gionee could fit into the phone a 2,750 mAH battery whose performance surpasses 50 percent of all devices in the market. The phone, which weighs 126.5 grammes, has dimensions of 39.8 x 67.4 x 5.5 mm and is available in black, white and blue.
• Display: The device comes with a super AMOLED capacitive full HD (1080 x 1920 pixels) 5.5-inch touchscreen with a screen-to-body ratio of 79.1 percent. The screen, which supports 16 million colours and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3, has a pixel density of 424. The images were brighter and there was no trouble with viewing angles on the display.
• Hardware and performance: Gionee chose a 1.7GHz octa-core MediaTek 6752 system on a chip (SoC) with integrated Mali-T760MP2 graphics for the Elife S7. The device comes with a 2GB RAM. This is where it scores big. All the benchmark scores give the S7 an advantage over the competition. It derived an An Tu Tu score of over 46,000, putting it ahead of several phones from rival brands. Gaming performance on the device is such that it could surpass 90 percent of all devices available in the market, while the general performance is at par with several flagship devices. Thermal management is good, which means that the phone did not heat up while playing heavy games.
• Software: The S7 runs Amigo OS 3.0 on Android Lollipop. The user interface is extremely fast and also offers a lot of themes that entirely change the look of the phone . A lot of apps also come pre-loaded.
• Storage and Connectivity: The device will ship with 16GB of internal storage but is not expandable. To tackle this problem, its maker provides a micro-USB-to-USB converter in the box so that consumers can make use of pen drives and other storage devices. In terms of connectivity, the phone supports two nano-SIM cards which are 4G LTE. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth v4.0.
• Camera: The device has a 13-megapixel rear and an 8-megapixel front camera. The rear camera is one of the best we have seen as it can take really sharp pictures. Gionee has also built in a lot of features that allow users to control aperture, focus and exposure. Low-light photography on the device could have been better. The camera app also sports features like geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, panorama and HDR.

Verdict: The S7 is one of the most stylish phones till date and also matches up when it comes to performance. Although the user interface might need some work, the device is designed for an absolute multi-tasker. In our opinion, it is a sure buy if one is looking for a stylish yet powerful phone.